


Letters to Santa

by Glowingchaos



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, solo mission
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-24 22:00:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17108885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glowingchaos/pseuds/Glowingchaos
Summary: Inspired by all those fics where Natasha breaks into Steve's apartment. One day while doing an appearance, several children slip Natasha notes, because as an Avenger she must know Santa. Well amongst the usual requests for ponies and video games, there are more heartrending pleas: my mom lost her job, we can't afford food, my dog got lost... you get the idea. Maybe it won't wipe any red off her ledger, but she has to try and help these kids.





	Letters to Santa

Paper brushed against her hand, and she looked down from the mall photoshoot to find a small girl with pigtails, smiling gap-toothed in a pink puffy jacket, offering an envelope covered in stickers and crude handwriting. “Miss? You're a superhero, right? So you have to know Santa! Santa knows everybody, but he hasn't been answering my letters! Please please please can you take this to him for me?” the child asked in the bouncy tune that stems from all children's mouths.

“Sure thing sweetie,” Natasha said, slipping on her mask for children, “and I'll make sure to let him know you were extra polite so you get the best presents. Do you want a hug?” The woman smiled. The girl hugged Natasha happily, but the assassin knew something was strange when she smelt (just barely) cigarette smoke and alcohol on the child's clothes. She watched the short thing toddle back over to her father, thin, scruffy, and with a cold stare piercing at the idol as he rushed his daughter and meek wife away.

She resolved to open the child's letter when she got home, lying to herself that she simply wanted to see inside the mind of what might have been a childhood she could have had.

“Dear Santa,” it said in the girl's atrocious handwriting, “I know you haven't gotten my leters, so maybe the nice lady who saved the world can get this to you. My daddy is mean a lot, and before when I tried to send you a leter, he found it and hit me alot with his hands and feet. He also drinks a lot of smely sower wator and smokes ciggarretts. I think drinking the bad wator make him hit and yell at me and Mommy. Maybe you can help? P.S. he tore my pink toy pony up. Can you bring me a new one? PSS Can you also bring some toys to the lady with the red hair becus she brot you this leter so she's very nice.

From Charlotte, 6 years old,

Appartment 48, 3864 Lanchester Lane,

New York City, New York, America,”

Natasha didn't even realize how upset she was until she drew in an angry, shaky breath. How dare this man hit her? How dare he expose her to alcohol and drugs when she's barely able to write?

She had an address. She had a problem.

She had a mission. Her first self-assigned mission.

Take care of the girl's father.

She might not kill him.. keyword: Might. But she was certainly going to break a rib and make him piss his pants in terror. If there was one underlying moral she had learned from world after being separated from the Red Room, it was this: Children are sacred, and anyone who harms them are the lowest of the low. So she strapped her guns to her legs, collected her Stark-manufactured gadgets, and requested the night off from Fury, who, after reading the letter she had crumpled by gripping it too-tightly in her hand, gave her not just the night, but a full 48 hours. She smiled a candid smile at him, nodded her thanks, and slipped silently into the night.

 

She was grateful for the invention of smartphone maps, because she got to the apartment in less than twenty minutes. There was already shouting by the time she slipped silently into the girl's bedroom window. She heard rattling and shouting from the kitchen and stalked silently through the doorway.

“Why the fuck would you tell anyone about this? I told you to never talk to anyone about this, even made up fools like fucking Santa Claus! And you! Why the hell did you let me allow her to walk up to that fucking crazy assassin lady in the mall today? She gave _her_ another fucking letter! It's a good thing pompous assholes like them never read their fanmail, huh? Else you'd be getting a whole 'nother ass-whippin, bitch!” the father screamed at the cowering child and mother. Natasha entered the room behind him, her finger held to her lips before she even entered the attacked's line of sight. The two looked startled but couldn't say anything, for fear of their attacker struck them too stone-still.

Natasha quickly and quietly padded up behind the man and flipped him onto the ground, kneeling on his now-broken ribs, covering his screaming mouth and nose with one hand, and holding his arms secure with the other. “Now, now, that's not very nice to shout at a little girl.” By this point she had taken a page from Steve's show-boy book and started adding flair for the little thing. “The _Avengers_ don't like people who make others scared. You've really screwed up this time.” She wanted so badly to twist this cockroach's neck and break it, but she knew this was a job that could be handled well enough by the cops and courts of law.

She turned her head to the mother and instructed, “Go call 911, tell them this maggot has been beating an innocent child. Now.” The poor woman scurried off to the phone while the man squirmed harder underneath her in retaliation of the knowledge that the police were coming.

 

“Th-thank you, Miss Widow,” the little girl trembled as the cops led the man away (two broken ribs and a cracked collarbone was the equivalent of tapping someone with a feather for Natasha) and Natasha remembered the atrocity she'd kept in a backpack strapped tight onto her figure.

“It's not Santa's gift, but I wanted to make things a little better after the mean man went away,” Natasha cooed, unzipping her pack and presenting a bright pink unicorn the size of the small girl herself.

“YAY!!! Thank you so much, Miss Widow, it's my favorite gift in the whole wide world! It's even better than Santa's gifts! Mommy, Mommy, look!” the girl cried out to her mother, who was already crying and hugged her daughter with all the love she held in her heart.

She slipped out the window before they could start the goodbyes.


End file.
